Danielle Young
EEE-2083
The Fountainhead
November 1, 2022
In the movie Fountainhead, its main character is a guy named Howard Roark. He got kicked out of artitecture school because he refused to follow the old traditional buildings. Howard is filled with all these new ideas that are stunning but no one wants to see them because it is something new. While he is facing all this backlash from the public anf from his peers he keeps persisting and making more designs for buildings. But while Roarck is struggling to have people see his vision while his friend Peter Keating is super successful because he is doing what everyone wants, like the social norm. Roark then sets up his own company but does not get jobs as often as he would like. He does get one job and it is for a bank, he drew up the plans and showed them. They wanted to add some classical touches, but he was against it, which then caused him to lose this job. Towards the end of the movie is when Peter's business starts failing and he reaches out to Roark for help.He begs Roark to help him design the Cortlandt Homes, a housing project, and Roark, realizing that he would never be able to get his own design past Toohey, agrees on condition that Peter promise it will be built exactly as he specifies. Peter does not have the strength of character to enforce Roark's wishes, and Roark returns from a vacation to witness the construction of a greatly altered building. Shortly after he returns he ends up blowin up the buildings that Peter just built. Faced with such guilt he ends up confessing what he's done.
It was interesting to see an entrepreneur not afraid to fail because his ideas do not match up with everyones elses. Which I think is a huge trait in entrepreneurs, they have an idea and they do not care if it is out of the norm. They love creating ideas and making them. I think this movie does a good job showing the passion that Roark has for architecture, and that he wants to create something new and is not afraid too. Roark was so set on having his projects be built to the exact way that he wanted he did not get a lot of jobs. Because if they changed one thing he was not okay with it. He did not want anyone's ideas on top of his idea, he wanted the whole thing to be his ideas. But I think he mostly thought like that because he wanted his buildings to be unique and not have the normal sense of character to them.
I think a good comparison to this movie would be the Henry Ford movie, he did not care what society wanted. He wanted something new, he wanted it the way he wanted it. He did not let what was popular in society affect what he was building, which is important in an entrepreneur's mind. Because why would you be an entrepreneur creating the same thing as everyone else. How does that make your product special?
